Various types of fireplaces are known in the art. One traditional type of fireplace is a masonry fireplace which is built into a room of a house or other dwelling unit. Such a fireplace has a masonry firebox and a masonry chimney extending upwardly to vent above the roof of a house. While these fireplaces may be decorative, their heating efficiency is very low. Further, these fireplaces are necessarily fixed in place and require that a room be decorated around the location of the fireplace.
One way to solve this problem has been to use a zero clearance fireplace. Such fireplaces may be positioned at any desired location in a room. Various designs for such fireplaces have been developed. Some of these fireplaces are designed to be energy efficient, i.e. to transfer some of the heating value of the fuel consumed in the fireplace to the room in which the fireplace is situated.
Such fireplaces are also used for their decorative value. However, due to the heat generated by their use, high efficiency fireplaces may only be utilized in the winter when they are used for their supplemental heating value.